What languages will you like to learn?

[chongjasmine]

If time and money are not an issue, what languages will you like to learn?
For me, I already know Mandarin and English.
I am learning Korean. I hope after Korean to learn Japanese, then German.
If I still can, I will like to learn Arabic, Thai, Italian, French, Spanish, Russian and Portuguese.
After that, I will like to learn Indonesian and Hindi.
I love languages.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

I am currently working on French, and hoping that it doesn't overtake my Japanese.

If I had all the time and money in the world, I would also learn Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

Can't shake the bible school kid out of me...

[maarsen]

If I had the time, Latin would be my choice. Nothing beats spouting off a choice phrase in Latin to sound like an officious prick. Now that I am approaching 70 years in age, I need to cultivate that part of my personality to fit in with the gang at the old age home.

[baxus]

A couple of days ago I started learning Swedish on Duolingo. I have no plans of moving to Sweden, I have no Swedish speaking friends and family, it's just a sort of a mental exercise and a fun way to spend 10-15 minutes every day.

If I had unlimited time and money, I must say it would be unlikely I'd spend it studying languages.  

[thgrlwthcurushar]

I'd like to learn Spanish and Mandarin. Navajo as well. I can't wait for the rest of my life so that I can go to classes for it. I believe I am going to exercise my brain and only become even more well-versed at life. Currently, the only language I know is English although I previously have taken classes in Spanish and French. But I never did retain the languages so I forgot it all. I guess I must let bygones be bygones and forgive myself of my inability to retain languages. 

[Tywin et al.]

On 9/17/2023 at 6:35 PM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I am currently working on French, and hoping that it doesn't overtake my Japanese.

If I had all the time and money in the world, I would also learn Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

Can't shake the bible school kid out of me...

Hebrew is honestly a waste of time. Next to no one can speak it and it takes forever to just sound like a five year old if you didn't grow up in Israel or a devout Jewish household. I was able to speak Spanish more proficiently studying it for half a year than I was Hebrew despite learning from ages 5 to 13. 

Speaking of which, I'd like to get my Spanish and French back up to task. I can still speak each a bit, but not nearly as well as I did when I took French in HS and Spanish in college. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Hebrew is honestly a waste of time. Next to no one can speak it and it takes forever to just sound like a five year old if you didn't grow up in Israel or a devout Jewish household. I was able to speak Spanish more proficiently studying it for half a year than I was Hebrew despite learning from ages 5 to 13. 

Speaking of which, I'd like to get my Spanish and French back up to task. I can still speak each a bit, but not nearly as well as I did when I took French in HS and Spanish in college. 

Well, to be honest, all I care about for Hebrew is reading. I want to get into the puns, and the crazy hermeneutics of medieval mystics. 

French has been going pretty well. I started learning last Fall, and I went to Lyon this past June, and was able to get my hair cut and make (admittedly basic) conversation with a guy who spoke no English. I took a short break because work has been kicking my ass, so I need to get back into it.

Spanish, most of that got shoved out of my brain when I learned Japanese. But, it did help my French reading. Years ago I did a postdoc in Montreal, and I could guess a lot of words just based on Spanish. So it's not a total loss.

Edited September 19 by Phylum of Alexandria

[Rippounet]

Japanese. I studied it for three years as an undergrad, and still regret never had the time to speak it competently.

If time really wasn't an issue... I guess I'd go back to German and Spanish.

I'd probably learn Hebrew as well, to exchange with some distant family members, and to be able to read some of the ancient texts without going through a translation (I was always told translations of the Bible were debatable).

[Tywin et al.]

33 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Well, to be honest, all I care about for Hebrew is reading. I want to get into the puns, and the crazy hermeneutics of medieval mystics. 

Most Hebrew lit is available in English and the language translates pretty well. And if you want puns, try Mel Brooks. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

40 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Japanese. I studied it for three years as an undergrad, and still regret never had the time to speak it competently.

 

I minored in Japanese, and studied abroad in Tokyo for a year. But crucially, a fellow student I met there studied at my Philly campus, and we're now married. That was the most impactful factor, obviously.

Well, that and Netflix's Japanese language offerings. Certainly helps me maintain my listening skills.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

20 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Most Hebrew lit is available in English and the language translates pretty well. And if you want puns, try Mel Brooks. 

I tried reading the Zohar and Sefir Yetzirah, and so much of that stuff is rooted in the language of the Torah. I can get the gist from a translation, but I can also tell that I'm missing of lot of the point of it.

Again, this is my own nerdy wankery I would be indulging. No good reason for it.

[Larry of the Lawn]

The langoo-wijjj of looooovvvveeee babeee

[Buckwheat]

I already know Slovene, German and English. I wanted to take Latin at university, but all the classes clashed with my mandatory ones, so that wasn't possible, so I still want to try learning that at some point. Obviously the problem is, there aren't many courses for that. Apart from Latin, I would want to try Finnish. Sadly I haven't seen any courses offered for that either.

Why these two? Latin because it is the root of a lot of modern European languages and just to see if it is really that hard as they say. Finnish fascinates me since I made a good friend from Finland during my Erasmus semester - the language is so different from the other European ones (and yet, the pronunciation rules actually look pretty simple for me).

Neither of these languages would be useful in my day to day life in any way.

[dog-days]

I did some Latin at university. Think the difficulty varies hugely depending on the era, text and author.  Classical authors tended to be more difficult than later authors and within that period, Silver Age writers were harder than Golden Age ones, so Tacitus is more difficult than Cicero and Lucan much much more difficult than Ovid. 

OTOH, I once tried to read a poem by John Donne showing off his Latin and found that pretty impenetrable too. That's Donne for you though. 

The medieval prose I've seen has been comparatively straightforward. 

Anyway, these days I'm learning Welsh. I'm planning on sitting the advanced exam next June. (It's not really that advanced; just B2 level on the CEFR, but I'm aiming for distinction.) 

Intellectually, I get that some people find studying small/dead languages to be a waste of time. But I don't think I'll ever grasp it emotionally since to me language is about so much more than utility. I'm not someone with much visual sensitivity. I'll go to an art gallery if someone else wants to go and try and make unstupid remarks about the paintings/sculptures etc while thinking that my feet hurt and wondering if there's a cafe.

As far as I can tell, the impact that other people feel from art is something like what I feel from language. "What's the point of Scottish Gaelic/Welsh/Basque*?" isn't a question I can't answer except with another question: "What's the point of the Mona Lisa?" 

*Not just a rare language, but a pre-Indo-european one, the only living example in western Europe. 

Edited September 25 by dog-days

[Toth]

Ah, I was lucky to get into a Latin course at my university as well! And agree with the sentiment that it's a fantastic way to understand the roots of most modern European languages. Being there I finally understood some of the French grammar... (which... I admit is more telling about how much my school French sucked).

During high school I also bought and devoured a textbook about Ancient Egyptian and also found that very fascinating to learn how such an early language was constructed. However beyond the grammar I unfortunately only have scraps of vocabulary because the prices for dictionaries are absolutely insane. So... in practice I can at most read aloud texts, but with no understanding of their meaning.

Other than that... well, German is my native language and since I consume my media almost entirely in English, frequent English forums like this one and write stories in English, I'd say my English is rather passable as well.

However I have now tried to learn Japanese for five years and it's been quite a struggle, especially thanks to my lack of time to consistently keep at it. This summer break I started reading my first visual novel in Japanese, but most sentences still take me easily 20 minutes to translate by hand.

Edited September 24 by Toth

[Clueless Northman]

6 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

 Latin because it is the root of a lot of modern European languages and just to see if it is really that hard as they say.

French is harder, but of course it's easier to practice French than Latin. But then, you merely need to be able to read Latin, not to understand spoken Latin or to actually write or speak it. And even there, ancient Greek is tougher - same for Hebrew or Sanskrit, if only because they're farther away from current European languages. Of course, decent knowledge of English, Spanish or Italian (or even better, all three) helps a lot for French as well as for Latin (and knowledge of French helps for Latin, or the reverse).

As for me, if time wasn't an issue (something close to impossible considering all that I'd like to do), I'd go back to dust off my Latin and Greek and would improve my Italian and Spanish. That would be in all cases building up on what I already learned and the bits I've managed to keep over the years, because honestly I've no idea which other languages I'd pick if I had time - too many to choose from and I've no idea which criteria I should rely on to pick new ones, though trying a non-Indo-European one would be interesting.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

Despite living in Austria for the past 8 years, my German has basically been stuck for the past few years at around B2. It doesn't help that I work and teach in English and speak to my German partner primarily in English. But I would like to get over this last hurdle and officially reach C1. 

After that? 

I'll be honest. Plattdeutsch would be interesting, since I will soon be living in northern Germany, but I think that Arabic or Italian would be far more useful. 

Edited September 25 by Matrim Fox Cauthon

[Filippa Eilhart]

I think I'm languaged out. The very thought fills me with dread. It would be nice to learn some more Luxembourgish given that I'm a citizen but I really can't be bothered

[Luzifer's right hand]

1 hour ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

Despite living in Austria for the past 8 years, my German has basically been stuck for the past few years at around B2. It doesn't help that I work and teach in English and speak to my German partner primarily in English. But I would like to get over this last hurdle and officially reach C1. 

After that? 

I'll be honest. Plattdeutsch would be interesting, since I will soon be living in northern Germany, but I think that Arabic or Italian would be far more useful. 

Learning German might be easier in Germany than in Austria.

Although if you are moving to an area where they still speak Plattdeutsch that might not be the case.

Have you considered watching stuff only dubbed in German to increase your vocabulary. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

15 hours ago, Toth said:

However I have now tried to learn Japanese for five years and it's been quite a struggle, especially thanks to my lack of time to consistently keep at it. This summer break I started reading my first visual novel in Japanese, but most sentences still take me easily 20 minutes to translate by hand.

When I was taking classes (and especially when studying in Tokyo) I was on promising track to competently read and write Japanese. I think at my best I knew about 1,000 kanji. But that's still not nearly good enough to read a newspaper.

Now, my writing has gone to hell, though of course keyboards help in that respect. But my reading is pretty terrible. There's some baseline of kanji that I'll always know well, and plenty others I can usually guess right, but I've given up on actually trying to read stuff. Not that I couldn't learn, but it's so impractical to do so! Even flipping through my kanji dictionary takes more effort than any other dictionary. 

So, my Japanese is limited to conversation, mostly of the casual variety. Reading in French is so much easier! Not that I'm good at it, but I'm more functional at this early stage than I ever was with Japanese, even at my best.